


Divine Retribution

by paradiamond



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dramatic Irony, F/M, Fear, Ghost Possesion, Kylo POV, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Loss of Control, The Force, Vomiting, basically this boy plays himself, calling Rey for help, disphoria, force ghost, it's fun, kind of, pre-TLJ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-10
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-02-13 03:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12974499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradiamond/pseuds/paradiamond
Summary: Lately Kylo has gone out of balance. He sees things that are not there, loses time, feels disconnected from himself. Believing them to be the side effects of his divided and unquiet mind, he seeks to purge himself of the defects. However, as has always been the case, he seems to only make it worse. Something is punishing him for what he has done, and for what he is going to become.Unbeknownst to him, Anakin has finally cracked the walls Snoke put up, and he's making up for lost time.





	1. Fading

**Author's Note:**

> Hi this is the obligatory force ghost Anakin fic with Rey as the key to Kylo figuring it out! I'm going to put this boy through the wringer.

“Sir?” The voice buzzes through the communicator in the wall of the lift, innocuous and rather too quiet. 

“Speak,” Kylo says, trying to prepare for the news. Trying to control himself. 

“The party evaded capture.” 

Kylo shuts his eyes, grateful for the mask and for his solitude. “Understood.” 

The connection clicks off quickly. They all fear him. Some have even taken to lying to him to avoid being the one to bring him bad news. Lies that have cost lives and equipment, entire missions ruined because his own side is afraid that he will murder them if they speak the truth. Which he likely will. It makes sense for them to act this way, even if he hates them for it. 

His hands shake. He wraps one around the other behind his back in a poor attempt of self control. Too late. He engages his lightsaber in the elevator and slices through the doors. It cuts easily, leaving molten metal being and haulting the lift. Kylo doesn’t stop. He shreds the walls, cleaving the interior and feeling the sudden lurch as the pieces start to separate in the shaft. Breathing hard, but not getting enough air in the mask, he finally makes himself stop. The groaning metal moves under his weight. Kylo grits his teeth and holds it together with the Force, opens the ruined door and lifts it the rest of the way. 

The hallway in completely deserted. Kylo steps out and lets the ruined metal fall, all the way down. He stops to listen to the crash, displeased with himself for destroying it and with Rey for evading him again. It’s her fault, really. 

Someone enters the hallway, just barely within his view. The man hovers in the shadows, still and silent with fear, he assumes. He whips around to face the coward suddenly, the monster they’re all forced to reside with, but he has already fled. There’s no sign of him. 

Kylo lets out a harsh breath which comes through the mask as a rumble. He turns and stalks in the direction of his quarters, furious again. They don’t have the right to avoid him, to hide in the outer edges of his peripheral vision. It has been happening more and more lately. The feeling of being watched but not approached. He curls his hand into a fist and make an abrupt turn, heading towards the security section instead. 

He’ll find out who has been haunting his steps and teach them a lesson in respect they won’t forget. 

The technician jumps in his seat when he sees Kylo enter the room. “Leave.” Kylo waves his hand and the man scrambles to his feet as though Kylo had used the Force. Kylo ignores him entirely, focusing on the screens in front of him. 

“Play recording of West hallway B, 0800 hours.” 

_Retrieving recording,_ the computerized voice drones, and the screens shift from a patchwork of stills to one large image of Kylo emerging from the ruined elevator. He shakes his head. The angle is wrong to capture the instigator. 

“Switch to camera A. Same specifications.” 

There’s another shift and now Kylo sees himself from the side, huge and imposing even from this sterile medium. He braces his hands against the back of the observation room chair, watching for his visitor, but he never comes. There’s only Kylo, whipping around to stare at nothing at all. 

His muscles lock down to the point of pain, standing frozen and staring at the screens. Underneath his gloved hand, the cheap alloyed metal strains and starts to bend. There’s still nothing on the screen where there should be a person, a droid, something. 

Kylo has to resist the urge to replay the video. He know what he saw. Both now and in the hallway. The fact that they don’t match up, that it was all in Kylo’s mind, has him wrenching the chair up and off the floor and sending it flying to the far wall with a crash. It does nothing to temper the fire building inside him, the spiralling fear. 

If it had been the first time, that would be one thing, but three times is a pattern. Disturbingly, he finds that he doesn’t know what to do. 

Flickers out of the corner of his eye. Shades of figures that he can’t find any evidence of. Whispers in his dreams. His rage has been even harder to control, leaving an array of destruction in his wake wherever he goes. Like living outside of himself, helpless to stop it. 

He lets out a harsh breath and bends forward, leaning heavily on the control console. Folding in on himself. He can’t go to his Master with this latest failure of will, not without a solution already at hand. Snoke had become increasingly angry about his lack of control, and this latest failure will only make it worse. After everything that had happened in the past year between the loss of Starkiller base and this most recent incident, he simply can’t. 

Exerting control on his body again requires more effort than it should, but he manages to straighten up and walk back in the direction of his living quarters without another incident. Once the door slides shut he wrenches off his mask, nearly panting with relief. Vader’s own ruin of a mask waits for him from across the room, a melted relic of a different time. Kylo stares back at it, dread curling in his stomach. He shakes his head, attributing the malcontent to his own failure of control, and goes to his bed without bothering to take off even his boots. He passes out almost as soon as he’s fully laying down, slipping into the dark, and mercifully doesn’t dream at all. 

***

When he wakes, it’s with a jolt of pain and fear that has him sitting bolt upright in his bed, heart pounding in his chest and covered in sweat. He runs a hand through his hair and winces. 

“This is what you get for sleeping in your clothes,” he mutters to himself, a habit leftover from a different life. 

Disgusted, he gets up and strips out of his clothes, throwing everything he can find unceremoniously into the laundry shoot and padding into the bathroom to clean himself. He splashes water on his face and then rubs it over the back of his neck, still half asleep and residually furious at himself. Sighing, he straightens and glances up at the mirror, and freezes. 

Kylo stares, blank faced and disturbed. The thing staring back is not him. Logically, he knows that he has dark hair that touches his shoulders, light skin, dark eyes, and a large nose. But the image staring back of him is tinged with an unmistakable wrongness. He leans in, reaching out to touch the mirror with the express knowledge that he is looking into someone else's eyes. The images copies him exactly, providing further proof that he is actually looking at himself, but he can’t shake the cold fear creeping up his spine. 

The thing in the mirror blinks, even though Kylo is sure he didn’t. Sudden panic grips him, and he lunges for the toilet, emptying the meager contents of his stomach into it. He leans away, shuddering and horrified at himself, at this new and unexplained weakness. Possibilities race through his mind, ranging from some new form of training exercise his from his Master to complete mental collapse. Kylo wipes at his mouth with the back of his shaking hand, trying to calm his racing pulse even as he struggles not to vomit again. 

Disgusted, he hauls himself to his feet and doesn’t allow himself to hesitate before looking in the mirror again. He finds himself staring at his own image. Whatever wrongness had overtaken him had apparently passed while was on the floor. He leans away, frowning. It looks exactly the same except for the fact that it’s clearly him and not some imposter. 

Kylo turns away to think, leaning against the sink to put his back to the mirror, panting and residually terrified, and is immediately distracted by something he should have noticed right away. He lurches forward, scrambling for his clothes and mask, seething with rage. 

Someone had entered his room while he had been asleep and stolen from him. Before exiting, he casts one final glance over his shoulder to verify what he had seen, something he had previously not had to do, but the scene is the same. 

Darth Vader’s mask is gone. 

He stalks down the hall with no real destination, letting his body carry him forward until his mind catches up. He should look at the log for his door, find out when it had been opened without his consent. Grimly determined, he makes a sharp left and makes for the control room again. When he enters, Hux is there with a small contingent of white masked troopers. 

“Ah, Lord Ren. Come to put more holes in my walls?” 

Kylo ignores him, though he does make note of the now patched wall and new chair installed in the floor. Instead, he insinuates himself into the main control space. “I need to see the door log for room 729.” 

“That’s your room, is it not?” Hux interjects, likely because he can’t help himself. “If you’re having a problem with security-”

“Thank you General, that won’t be necessary,” Kylo says absently, not even bothering to be rude, busy as he is reviewing the schedule with a sinking feeling in his core. 

“Is something wrong?”

Kylo hesitates for a long moment. The log indicate that he had been the only one to open and close his door in the past week, but that the week had ended _yesterday_ when by Kylo’s reckoning, the final day should have been now. Somehow, he had lost a full day without noticing, while thinking that he had been asleep. 

“I- no. I merely have questions regarding my property,” Kylo replies, forcing his voice into a placid composure. Devoid of life. “I expect it to be returned to me as soon as possible.” 

“What?” Hux asks, and his voice is so genuinely confused, missing his usual needling, that it sends a sliver of worry through Kylo’s composure. He curls his hand into a tight fist to keep it from shaking. He knows the gist of what Hux is going say before it happens, seeing the images play out right under the surface of his simple mind. 

“Is this about that mask?” Hux sneers. “Ren, you threw it away yourself yesterday. Do you expect us to go looking for it?” 

“Yes,” Kylo shoots back, because he can’t see another way out. There’s no scenario where admitting weakness to Hux is a good idea. That road doesn’t end well for either of them. 

“It’s floating through space a thousand light years away by now! If you-”

Kylo raises a hand, effectively silencing him without having to exert his will. Hux may bark like a dog, trailing at the feet of his master, but he’s always been afraid of getting kicked like a dog as well. “You heard me. Now, get out. I need the room.” 

The others, the smart ones, start to scramble to get away as quickly as they can, no doubt anticipating some Force-driven outburst. Hux curls his lip, but fortunately for his quality of life he doesn’t say another word. Once the door slides shut, Kylo pauses, half fearing the explosion himself, but it doesn’t come. Instead he has the strangest sensation of pressing all around him, of struggling to breathe. He tells himself that his mask must be malfunctioning but doesn’t reach up to take it off. 

Breathing as steadily as he can, Kylo presses the necessary keys and commands to find the video he now knows he needs to see. It plays without sound, but the images are unmistakable. He holds himself as straight and steady as possible given the sinking feeling in his chest. Of course, out of all the things he has looked for in the past few weeks, this is what he finds video evidence of. 

Hardly breathing at all now, he watches his own image as it approaches the airlock with a package tucked under its arm, trying and failing to believe that it is perhaps someone simply dressed like him until he steps fully into view and it becomes clear that he isn’t wearing the mask. There’s no surprise, but also no recognition, in seeing this man put Darth Vader’s mask into the airlock and eject it into space. Kylo freezes the frame as the figure turns back around and begins to walk back, probably to his room. Where Kylo then woke up. 

Sleepwalking is not a weakness he needs added to his list of faults. Suddenly lightheaded, he leans forward to brace his weight against the consol. _I need it. I needed that,_ he thinks, mortified and confused. Kylo shakes his head, letting it hang heavy between his shoulder blades. 

Down on the other end of the console, a light blinks and a voice crackles through the communicator. 

“Sir?”

He slams his fist into the console once, feeling something in his hand give. Grimacing but feeling significantly more grounded, he straightens up and engages the intercom. “What?”

“There is a response to your message. Would you like me to patch it through?” 

“Message?” he says to himself, pressing his injured hand into his side, hard. Pain shoots up his arm, lighting quick and agonizing. He lets up a harsh breath and presses the button again. “Yes. Immediately.” 

Whether it’s a half-lost memory or just intuition, he somehow knows it’s going to be Rey before it even reaches him. Hearing her voice should merely be another insult on top of the already mortifying turn of events, but it’s this that brings him to the brink, that sends him reeling. 

“Kylo Ren,” she says firmly, as though she had said it a thousand times before, her voice ever the same. Kylo sucks in a shocked breath. The recording of Rey continues. 

“I don’t know what plan you think you’ve hatched, but do you take me for a fool? What help could I possibly offer you?”


	2. Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo tries to turn the situation to his advantage. 
> 
> Predictably, it does not work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rey appears! My girl.

Kylo sits shut into his quarters, elbows braced on his knees, hands steepled in front of him. He hasn’t moved for a long time. Meditation would be wise, but he is concerned that if he gives up that much direct control he might slip back into whatever had afflicted him the night before. 

The climate control system pumping air into the room is nearly silent, but not quite. Kylo takes a deep breath, the sound mechanical and filtered through his mask. For a horrible moment he is gripped with terror that he might wake tomorrow morning and find this mask gone as well, but he lets it go, focuses on the task in front of him. The girl. 

There must be a reason for it all, some measure of order within the chaos that he simply can’t see yet. Kylo flexes his fingers and relaxes, trying to clear his head. A disturbance in the Force. He had been led to act by the Dark. It is a sign, not a failure. 

The Force must have led him to lure Rey in while he was in a trance, what he took to be sleepwalking, and had instructed him to begin executing it. Kylo nods to himself and pushes himself up. It could work. Rey isn’t stupid, but she is naive and fundamentally kind to a fault. Kylo had been inside her mind and he knows that she wants him back on her side as much as he had wanted her on his. If she’s his weakness, he’s as much hers, just in a different way. 

He sits down at his desk, focused and prepared to carry out the plan laid before him. Some computer tracing had revealed that he sent her a simple text file as a message, courtesy of his own private server, but not what the message said. It’s jarring to think of how many others must have seen it before it reached her since he obviously he doesn’t know how to contact her directly. Unless, in his trance, he found a way. But it’s in the past now. 

Kylo opens up another text file, grateful at least that he can reply directly to the chanel she had sent her dramatic response to. 

The message he sends to her is brief, a request for help with a matter regarding the Force. An appeal to her better nature, one Force sensitive to another. It stings him deeply to send, even the pretence of weakness doesn’t sit well with him, but the reward is nearly immediate. She must have been waiting, stewing in her anger. 

When her image appears on the viewscreen, he feels the phantom flash of pain lancing across his face, against the scar that she gave him. But she only squares her shoulders and regards him coolly. 

“Kylo Ren.” 

He inclines his head. “Rey.”

She makes a face. “I’m not talking to you with that thing on your head.”

He blinks. “What?” 

Rey presses her lips together, turning them white before speaking again. “Take off the mask, or we’re done.”

Anger surges like bile, but he pushes it down. He does it, reminding himself that there will be little point in arguing. This will make her more comfortable, more likely to agree. Then she’ll be dead. No doubt she has the same idea. 

She settles back in the chair she’s sitting in and raises an eyebrow at him. Nothing about her surroundings tells him where she is. Just some generic Resistance ship. “Well?”

Kylo fights the urge to straighten his posture. He must appear weaker than he is, drawn out. “I- I need your help. Information. Something is happening to me. I’ve been sleepwalking, and seeing things out of the corner of my eye, but when I turn around there’s nothing there. I didn’t even intend to call you, it just-”

Rey interrupts him. “Why did you? Why not one of your Knights, or your Master?” The amount of contempt she inserts into the word is impressive. 

He laughs, even though he meant to wince. “I can’t.”

She huffs out a breath, and he can tell she’s seconds away from hanging up on him. 

Kylo presses. “I can’t, Rey. He’ll kill me. You’re the only one I can go to, you’re the only one who-”

“Fine. That I’ll believe. But what do you want?”

“I need help,” Kylo says again, and it sound real, even to his own ears. He looks away. “I’m losing my mind, I think.” 

Rey is shaking her head. “Why should I help you?”

“Because you want to stop me.” 

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Are you saying you’ll surrender?”

“Yes.” He expected this. 

“I don’t believe you.” 

Smart girl. Kylo keeps his head down. “I am...ineffective in my current state. If I can’t be useful-”

“Snoke will kill you,” Rey finishes for him. 

He looks up, adopting an angry expression. Under the desk, his fingers curl into his knees so tightly he feels the bones shift. “Most likely. Will you?” 

Rey blinks at him. He can almost see the gears in her mind turning. She’ll believe he’s lying of course, but hopefully about staying locked up once he ‘turns himself in.’ She tilts her head to the side slightly. “Why me? Surely there are others-” 

“Who?” Kylo throws back at her, his heart picking up in his chest. Panic starts to pull at him, the insistent fingers of a child begging for attention. Not right now, he can’t, not now. She frowns. Kylo nods. “No. There’s only you.” 

Rey stares at him, and he can all but see the gears turning behind her eyes. There’s something so simple, so straightforward about the way she is. It’s one of the weaknesses of the Light. No guile. 

“And I’ve been inside your head,” she says, quietly. He makes himself stay silent, letting her convince herself. She looks away, and then back. “What exactly is wrong with you? Tell me everything.” 

Kylo takes a breath, and tells her some of the events of the past few days, the lurking shadows, the weakness. He can’t bring himself to speak of the face in the mirror, but he tells her that he’s lost time, that he doesn’t remember anything about the past day. The mask he leaves out, but even still, it’s effective. Rey’s eyes widen as he speaks, taken in. It horrifies him that it works, that she finds his life so worthy of pity, but in the end it will be worth it. He’ll be rid of her for good. 

*** 

The meeting place is some long abandoned star with no life signs and no strategic value. They had both agreed to come alone, which Kylo does because he cannot risk anyone else finding out about his sleepwalking or the messages, and he trusts Rey to do the same because she’s almost pridefully honest. It would reflect poorly on her honor, so therefore she won’t do it. Childish. 

It does not, however, mean that she is above all tricks. 

The field Kylo lands his ship in is a few kilometers away from their proposed meeting place. He scans the area, and immediately notices the blip on his radar. A hidden rebel craft, cloaked with technology the First Order had only recently reverse engineered. It’s only the one ship, which is a promising sign, but she is there over three hours early. 

Kylo drums his fingers on the console, both annoyed and pleased. Of course, he can’t reveal that he picked up her ship’s signal, that would give too much about their strategic operations away, but the fact that they both had the same idea to show up to the appointed place early is amusing. He stands and shuts the ship down, scrambling the signal and re-calibrating the controls in such a way that only he will be able to fix. Then he heads out to find his victory over the scavenger at last. 

The field fades into woods, thick on the ground but thin, easy to see through. Kylo moves quickly, not bothering to be very quiet. Rey will have the high ground and will likely sense him coming. What he has to do is make sure she can’t sneak up on him. 

Something moves in the corner of his eye, but it isn’t her. He can feel it. Kylo doesn’t turn his head, determined to ignore the shadows for now. But as he walks, his heart rate picks up, as always a traitor to his control. Kylo takes long, even breaths to match his even stride. It doesn’t help. He starts to sweat.

By the time he reaches Rey, who has situated herself in a small clearing, his heart seems to be trying to pound its way out of his chest. He can feel it in his head, beating him from the inside. Still, he holds himself straight and stops in front of her, the very image of control. 

“You’re early,” he says, head high and fully expecting her to reply with the appropriate ‘so are you’. But she only stares, her eyebrows furrowed and her posture tight. 

Sudden anger clouds Rey’s face, starting in her eyes and bleeding all the way down to her fists, tightly clenched by her sides. “Who are you?”

He blinks, so caught off guard that he forgets to press his advantage. “What?”

She narrows her eyes, visibly dangerous. “I should have known it was something like this. Whoever you are, you didn’t think this through. I know Kylo Ren, I’ve been inside his mind, and you’re not him.” 

Fear, now so familiar, grips him and he shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re- Stop talking. Face me!” Kylo reaches down and yanks his lightsaber from his belt. Rey doesn’t flinch. 

She raises an eyebrow at him and takes a slow step forward. “No. I’ve fought Kylo Ren and I know his Force signature. I’ll ask you again. Who are you? Did you kill him?” 

The pounding in his head beats behind his eyes, making him dizzy. The shaking returns, and no matter how hard he squeezes his hand around the pommel of his saber, it won’t stop. Rey raises her chin, a sign she’s about to attack. Kylo recognizes this, but for a terrible second he’s too shaken to respond. And every second counts with Rey. 

She lunges at him with the long staff that had been strapped to her back not a moment before. Kylo manages to stumble back a step, but her first strike hits him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He trips, barely able to see, then rights himself and lashes out violently, missing by a mile. 

“Is this why you lured me out here? To flail around?” Rey hits him in the face, overlaying his scar. “Kylo Ren wouldn’t fall for cheap tricks like that, if you’re going to impersonate someone, you have to do better than-” 

Kylo throws himself at her, roaring and engaging his lightsaber in the same moment. He has the momentary pleasure of seeing Rey’s eyes go wide before she dodges his strike, swinging around to his left side to hit him in the flank. Kylo rolls with the motion, lessening the blow and using the momentum to pitch himself forward. He brings the saber across his body, his long arms forcing her to jump back to stop herself from being cut in half. As it is, she gets a signed sleeve for her trouble. 

Kylo rounds on her, driving her back. “You think you can play mind games with me?” 

Rey blinks, all wide eyes and misplaced innocence. He wants to break it, to drive her away from him so she’ll has to stop. Then her face clouds with anger. 

“What are you?” she yells, and dives at him, discarding her staff for her saber and throwing herself into the strike. 

They clash in the middle of the clearing, reminiscent of the first time they had fought except Kylo isn’t injured and Rey is trained, back on equal footing. She’s faster than him by virtue of being smaller, but she’ll never be stronger for the same reason. For every strike he lands, she lands two, but his jar her to the bones. 

They come together again, crossing blades, and he leans in, his face between the two glowing blades. 

“You should have killed me.”

Rey recoils. “What?”

“I said, you should have killed me when you had the chance,” Kylo growls, and pushes her away, disengaging them and using her confusion to strike again, to end it. His vision goes red the way it had done when he killed his father, making it easy to rear back and bring his saber down on her. 

In the next moment he’s frozen, his saber held over his head in an exaggerated arch. He strains, trying to push against it, to break her hold on him, but he can’t. Whatever she’d been doing, she’d gotten much, much stronger. The feeling of himself is gone, less like he’s been trapped in his own body and more like he’s entirely gone. His bones are light, full of air. Kylo can’t even make a sound. 

Oddly, Rey jumps back like she’d been burned, and then stops, her eyes wide at his sudden change. She eases forward again and tilts her head. She takes a step, then another, coming closer, cautious. There’s almost no space between them when she reaches up to his face, and he feels a spike of panice before her fingers find the mechanism under his chin to pull off his mask. Then she leans back to peer into his eyes, her own open and curious. 

She frowns at him. “Kylo?” 

Instinctively, Kylo tries to reach out of himself and into her, to seize her mind, but he finds that he’s blocked. Not by Rey, though she’s surely capable of it, but from the inside. 

There’s nothing to call to, no Force to answer him. Terror seizes him, horrible and searing like it had been when it took over him in the bathroom, except this time he can’t even move. It’s like dropping down into dark water, feeling it fill up his lungs. The blackness takes over everything, even his vision. 

Dimly, he hears Rey shout, sees her run forward as if to catch him. 

Then, nothing. A haze. Whispers. 

When he comes back, she’s gone. The sun is in a different place. Kylo sits up, spotting his mask on the grass near his feet. Sudden anger bubbles up at the sight of it and he pound the ground in rage at her gall and embarrassment over her pity for him, her disregard. Why else would she leave him alone again? Why let him live? 

“Why?” Kylo pants, on his hands and knees in the dirt. He feels physically weak, and drained of the Force, though he can feel it again at the edges of his mind at least, rebuilding itself piece by piece. The sun moves while he’s crouched there, getting closer to the horizon, a sign that he’d been gone for far too long. But he’s no better. Shadows still play at the edges of his vision, he hadn’t done what he came to do, and Rey hadn’t _recognized_ him. 

The knowledge of what he must do, where he must now turn, haunts him. So much so that he stays in the dirt just a little longer as a voice in his head tell him to run and not look back.


	3. Finding

Everything hurts, to the point that even his bed feels hard beneath him. The basic medic droids equipped to the stealth ship he had been obliged to take had come and gone, sparing him the indignity, at least, of having others see him like this. He breathes carefully, trying not to jolt himself as he stares up at the ceiling. Trying not to feel so afraid. 

Unsurprisingly, his Master had not been pleased by his call, and had demanded his presence in person, a rare enough command without the added shock of pain. It was that displeasure that had struck him down, even from so far away, through the connection they shared. A connection that was now closed to him entirely. 

Nerve damage. The droids had been clear and efficient. Broken arm. From his flailing on the floor. Deep tissue bruising. Kylo blinked, and left his eyes closed this time, breathing slow. Failure was not to be tolerated. 

Beneath him, he can just feel the movement of the tiny ship, small and vulnerable, not noteworthy enough to be molested by anyone. The world Snoke occupied was far afield, and intentionally difficult to reach. A faster ship would have been more practical, but no one was to know of Kylo’s shameful mission, and certainly not the First Order. 

Next to him, the bed dips, and a hand lands gently on his shoulder, warm and firm. 

“Father,” he says without thinking, then he sits bolt upright, heart pounding. 

Of course, there’s nothing there. Just another symptom of his growing madness, then. The mirrors had been stripped from the small ship at his command, and he cut all but the most basic communications out of an excess of caution, but he was not safe, not even now. 

He breathes hard, in and then out, then again, and notices with a jolt that it shouldn’t even be possible for him to be sitting up at all, let alone without pain. He looks down at himself, focusing on the reality of the situation which lies so far outside the unreality in his head. Unless he was imagining it again, his body was almost healed. Kylo stares. 

There was no way to tell, no way to know what was real. A mirror, had there been any, would have lied to him just as easily. A surveillance image might do the same. He had no way of knowing. 

Still, the reprieve from pain was nothing to scoff at. He swings his legs over the side of the bed, careful to be careful with himself, and feels nothing. Feet on the floor. Pressure on his legs. All fine. He stands up, and heads for the closet, hoping that his muscles wouldn’t give out at a seemingly random time at any point. 

He keeps his eyes ahead, not checking to see if the shadows at the corners of his eyes mean anything. If they did, he would know soon enough. His master would tell him, he would repair what was wrong in his mind. Until then, it is irrelevant, as is the fact that he’s still many days ride away from his destination. There is simply nothing he can do, just like there is nothing he can do about the pressure at his temples, the distance he feels from the Force. Wait. 

Wait and listen. Wait and win. Kylo has been patient before. He has waited for pain, and been rewarded. He has persevered through harder trials than this. 

But the stars through the small viewscreen mock him, moving slowly across the expanse. He curls his hand under his chin, settled in the lone chair on the tiny bridge, and stares, ignoring the movements that are not real, the constant sense of being watched. Sweat drips down his spine. His heart rate picks up. All the while he stays as still as possible, though his hand shakes when he releases even the smallest amount of tension from his fist. Hunger claws at him, but he doesn’t get up, knowing that he won’t be able to keep anything down. He doesn’t know if it’s coming from what ails him or if it’s just the fear. 

Either way, he waits. 

***

The shapes dancing around in the corner of his vision becomes unbearable after about an hour. Kylo lets out a sharp breath, coming through as a hiss through his mask, and whips his head around, already irritated with himself for giving in. There’s nothing there, of course, but there is something else. 

Kylo hauls himself to his feet, stiff from sitting in the chair for so long and weak from the lack of food, and leans toward the outdated display screen. A small dot moves at a constant pace, going the right direction. But there is another dot, just out of emergency sensor range, following him. 

Kylo narrow his eyes. The Force is still distant from him, still a thread he can’t quite grasp. But he doesn’t need it to know Rey. 

Irritated, he returns to his seat, casting a glance at the basic controls of the ship. It’s nothing fancy, certainly. Even an expert in old ships might underestimate it. But there is enough to make it fly, to give it the punch needed to be deadly in the right hands. He won’t kill her now, not like this, not in the impersonal vacuum of space. But he doesn’t have to. 

Slowly, Kylo reaches over to the controls, and shuts them off. 

Everything goes dark, and the ship jerks to a stop, spinning wildly due to the sudden lack of active stabilizers on an object moving at a slight angle. Kylo’s head spins with it, the pressure increasing exponentially on his possibly still injured body, but remains in his seat, counting. 

When he gets to five, he flips them back on. 

All of the very few things his father ever taught him worth knowing were about ships. Always. Kylo knows how to steal ships, how to take them apart. He knows what parts are valuable and where they are. He understands them. 

Most importantly for the present moment, he knows how old ships differ from new ships. This piece of metal hurtling through space is a simple beast. On or off. Signal or no signal. No fancy computerized backups, no safety protocols. Not like Rey’s newer Resistance stealth model, which will have looked for those hidden signals, expecting clever tricks, not jarring power outages. It doesn’t have the ability to find his ship in the dark, not in the five seconds Kylo gives it to unwittingly catch up with him, and Rey doesn’t have the spine to blast him out of the sky when he suddenly reappears, giving him time to activate the tractor beam, catching her like a fly in a web. 

Kylo breathes out harshly, relief mixing with annoyance and a sense of victory. But he just wants her gone. At his elbow, the inter-ship comm buzzes, and he flicks it on absently. “Rey.” 

There is a long pause. “Hello. I’m not sure what to call you.” 

He presses his lips together, hard, a hot spike of anger driving through him. “Fine. What do you want?” he grinds out, managing his temper at the edge of a cliff. 

“Answers.” 

Difficult to argue with, since he is on his way for the same. But he can’t lead her to Snoke, not when he’s compromised like this. And the advantages of his ship against hers are also the disadvantages. His scanners can’t pierce her shields, even at close range. There could be anyone on that ship with her, anyone at all. 

“Lower your shields.” 

“No.” 

“Do it, or I’ll blast you out of the sky,” he threatens, ignoring the frantic movement of the shadows behind him, creeping closer and closer. 

“You would have done that already if that’s what you wanted.” 

“I don’t want it, but I will do so if I have to. Lower the shields, I have you trapped.”

There is a long pause, but she complies, apparently saving her strength and trickery for later battles. He glances over the scans. “Foolish of you to come alone.” 

“You’re alone too,” she answers, sounding childishly defensive. 

“I didn’t chase after you though, did-” he cuts himself off with a growl, unwilling to fight with her now. “Prepare to be boarded.” 

“Fine.” 

He stands, and something stands with him, right at his back. He whirls, somehow caught off guard even after all this time, and freezes. There’s no way he should be facing her now, not like this. Perhaps he should drag her ship to Snoke, keep her trapped there until they figure out what to with her. And with him. 

He stares at the empty space for a long moment before turning away, heading for the airlock. 

***

Rey has no visible weapons that he can see through the forcefield, which he takes as a rather performative display of innocence. He glares at her through the shimmering barrier, deeply aware that she’s always dangerous. Especially now, when he’s not sure he can fight her with the Force. 

She stares at him, eyebrows raised, and he can’t very well back down now. 

Cautiously, and making sure that his own weapon is visible on his belt, he reaches over and disengages the field separating their two ships, watching her tense, and then freeze, abject confusion on her face as it falls. 

“Kylo?”

He glares. “Yes, Rey, now-” 

“Who- what is that?” she asks, her eyes fixed on a point just beyond his shoulder, right at the spot Kylo had caught a flash of movement earlier. 

He freezes, unwilling or unable to turn around. Part of his mind is screaming at him to take advantage of her distraction, the other part is terrified, back to a child afraid of the dark as he watches her eyes move, tracking movement behind him that isn’t really there. 

One obvious disadvantage of the darkside was the tendency to rash, anger driven behavior. Knowing this had rarely helped Kylo avoid the pitfall. Between fight, flight, or freeze, he picks fight. Every time. 

His hands flies up, and Rey blinks, too late, distracted. 

Her mind is as he remembers it, like the ocean. Changeable on the surface, deep underneath. It’s fascinating, and especially compelling after being denied access the last time. Relief at still being able to do this, to connect with the Force in this way, clouds his resolve. Had she been of a mind to attack, he’d be vulnerable. 

Instead, Rey again looks back at his shoulder, behind his shoulder, and he follows her gaze, slipping into her perspective, and finds himself looking at a young, oddly blue-tinted man with his hands tuck into the sleeves of his robe. 

Ghost. Composed of the Force. Or channeling the Force, depending on the text. Rey had clearly not read anything of the kind, alarmed as she still seems by the image. 

“I- what’s happening?” 

The Ghost smiles. “It’s alright, Miss Kenobi.”

Rey jerks back. “What?”

He blinks at her. “You did not know? I apologize. It is not, however, what I went through all this trouble to discuss.”

Kylo stands perfectly still, the shock holding him hostage, even when they both turn to look at him. 

“It was you,” he manages.

“Yes.” The Ghost eyes him with visible distaste. “Take off that stupid mask, I can’t stand to look at you like that.”

“Why?”

The man scowls. “Because it’s ridiculous, a symbol of-”

Kylo shakes his head. “No, I mean why now?”

The Ghost stares at him, his face completely impassive. A dry sort of serenity hangs about him in a cloud, like an old book. Eventually, Kylo gets the hint and pulls the mask off. 

“You’ve been fighting me for years, I thought it was high time to take more drastic measures.”

Kylo takes in a sharp breath. The mask. The connection. 

“I never fought against you, Grandfather.”

Rey gasps. 

“No?” Anakin Skywalker shakes his head. “I’ve been calling you back to the light for a long time. You ignored me.”

Kylo rears back like he’d been slapped, struck as speechless as Rey, who stares at him with wide eyes. 

Anakin sighs. “I’ve never been particularly good at going about things the right way. I apologize for that.” 

Something had wrapped itself all the way around his chest and was squeezing hard, crushing his ribs to his heart. “You- why wouldn’t you just speak to me?”

Anger, brief but intense, crosses his face. “I’ve been trying, but that snake of yours has been blocking me for years.” 

Snake. Kylo shakes his head, cold sweat dripping down his spine. “No.” 

“Yes,” Anakin insists. “My daughter was right, you were manipulated, from a very young age.” He crossed his hands into his sleeves. “It was ingenious, really, but that’s beside the point.” 

His daughter. Kylo’s mother. He scowls. “No.” 

“Yes.” 

“No!” Kylo throws himself at the figure, realizing half a second too late that there’s no point. The anger, again. Worse, his body barely holds him, weak from his abuse of it, and his slides across the metal floor, coming to a wild stop at the wall. Rey stares at him, eyes wide. 

“The Dark side.” Anakin smirks, turning easily to face Kylo again. “So strong, yet so overpowering. It’s easy to get lost there. You should be careful.” 

Kylo presses his closed fist against the metal of the wall. “Don’t presume to tell me what to do.”

“Oh now you don’t want it?” Anakin shakes his head. “No, you do. I heard you. Hear me now, boy, and find some balance within yourself. Find the light. The real balance, not the absence of struggle, but the acceptance of it.” 

“It’s too late.” Kylo raises his chin, his hands clenched into fists at his side. “There is no going back. I’ve fully accepted the darkness. It is too strong in me for that now.” 

“There’s the Skywalker arrogance,” Anakin sneers, and looks towards the wall, though Kylo suspects he’s seeing something else entirely. “You think you’re the first to live this? I nearly killed my own son.”

“I killed my father,” Kylo spits. “Your son still lives.” 

Anakin looks back up, and his focus feels like a punch in the gut. “Yes, and I would appreciate it if you did not hurt him any further.”

Kylo rocks back on his heel, like he’d been slapped. Rey is still staring at them, breathing hard and clearly feeling the strain of channeling this ghost. Sweat rolls down her temple, and she reaches up to wipe it away, her hands shaking. 

Anakin softens, somewhat. “I never said it would be easy, only that it will be worth it. You need to do what I never did.”

“What?” Kylo breathes, desperate for it, for the instruction. 

“Let people help you.” 

“But-”

“Or don’t.” His expression twisted, becoming something unpleasant, an ancient malice, before smoothing out again. “Do what you will, but do not use me as an excuse for any of it, not anymore.”

“It’s too late for me.”

“Fool.” Anakin shakes his head, and tucks his hands into his sleeves again. “It’s never too late.” 

He starts to fade, the change happening first at the edges. Kylo reaches out, desperate, tripping over the connection and unintentionally sending himself in a spiral between Rey’s point of view and his own, the images overlapping and too close, dizzying to the point that he staggers, and falls. His knees hit the metal floor of the ship, jarring all the way to his spine, and he gasps, struggling at once to get a foot underneath himself again, but Anakin is already gone. He stares at the place where he had been, blinking rapidly. 

“Will you listen?” Rey asks, and Kylo jumps. Somehow, he had forgotten her. 

“What?” His voice is rough, sandpaper against rock. He clears his throat. 

She drifts close, twisting her hands, obviously still reeling from the strain of channeling that much Force. Her hair sticks to her sweaty forehead, and her knees shake, just a bit. His hands twitch, longing to reach out. He sets them on the floor instead, noticing for the first time that he’s still holding onto his helmet, the metal cutting into his hand, and uses it to haul himself up on shaking legs. 

“Kylo,” she starts again, already more steady. Resilient. “What are we going to do?” 

“We?” he sneers, leaning away. 

Oddly, she glares at him. “Did you really not listen? After everything we just heard? After-” 

“Yes, alright.” He’s dizzy, drained. 

The Force is there, at the edge of his mind, but still elusive. Snoke. He curls his hand tighter around the helmet, and then drops it, the metal on metal loud in the space. Rey doesn’t jump at the sound. She crosses her arms over her chest, looking strangely very young and very old, and completely unafraid of him. Though, he supposes, he hadn’t made a particularly fearsome figure of himself the last few times. 

He frowns at her. “Why are you still here?” 

Rey blinks. “I- well to start, you have my ship in a tractor beam.” 

Kylo stares at her. She could pull his saber to her. She could render him helpless, take over his mind, like he once did to her. She’s no doubt aware of this, having channeled a Ghost for him. He’s in no position to stop her. 

“I see.” 

“I could leave,” she clarifies, her eyes wide with something. 

“I know.” 

Rey nods, and takes a step closer. “Well?” 

Kylo stares at her, his legs still shaking from the strain, from the toll of the past weeks. Rey is a rock before him, weakened but never weak, standing with her chin tipped up towards his face. He nods, unsure of what it is, exactly, he’s agreeing to, but the sense of rightness, the certainty, stays. 

“Alright.”

**Author's Note:**

> paradiamond.tumblr.com ~ for more ghost nonsense


End file.
